Flag Day Ruling Keeps 'God' in the Pledge
by Fred Jackson and Jody Brown
June 14, 2004
(AgapePress) - Fifty years ago today, Congress added two words to the Pledge of Allegiance. Today the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed a bid by a California atheist to have those words -- "under God" -- removed from the Pledge.The Michael Newdow case shook the Christian community last year when the Ninth U.S. Circuit of Appeals ruled his objection to the two-word phrase "under God" had merit. Newdow had argued that his daughter was offended by the religious content of those words, and therefore a public school should not force them upon her in the saying of the Pledge.
But in today's 8-0 ruling (Justice Anton Scalia did not participate in the case), the Supreme Court said Newdow's case did not have standing because he did not have legal custody of this daughter. Writing for the court, Justice John Paul Stevens stated that "when hard questions of domestic relations are sure to affect the outcome, the prudent course is for the federal court to stay its hand rather than reach out to resolve a weighty question of federal constitutional law."
Newdow, on the other hand, calls the ruling "a blow for parental rights." Following the court's announcement, he said that the suggestion that he does not have sufficient custody is "just incredible." According to Newdow, his daughter spends ten days a month with him. "I may be the best father in the world," he told Associated Press.
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist agreed with the outcome in Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow, but still wrote separately to say that the Pledge as recited by schoolchildren does not violate the Constitution. Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Clarence Thomas agreed with him.
Brian Fahling of the American Family Association Center for Law & Policy says the win is not as clean as pro-family groups would have liked, but it is a win nonetheless.
"The dismissal was appropriate on standing ground -- and the net effect, of course, is that it will vacate the lower-court decision from the Ninth Circuit and it will reinstate the words 'under God' in the Ninth Circuit and all the states that fall under [that court's] authority," he says.
The attorney says the high court did what the Ninth Circuit should have done long ago -- and notes that while conservatives might be disappointed that the Supreme Court did not uphold the Pledge on the merits, today's decision "shows a refreshing degree of restraint that has been sadly missing in recent cases addressing controversial social issues."
Fahling does admit, however, that because of the technical nature of today's Supreme Court ruling it does leave open the possibility for further challenges to the Pledge. He says the court did not address the larger question of whether the words "one nation, under God" blur the line between Church and State.
Had the lower-court ruling stood, it would have stripped the reference to God from the version of the Pledge said by about 9.6 million schoolchildren in California and other western states.
